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Protesters Around the Country Call for Fed’s Prosecution of Zimmerman, But Leading Dem Says not so Fast

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Photo Credit: werthmediaProtesters call for federal civil rights lawsuit in Trayvon Martin case

By Elise Viebeck. Protesters around the country on Saturday are calling on the Obama administration to prosecute George Zimmerman, the man acquitted of killing unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin, on civil rights grounds.

The demonstrations come after President Obama downplayed the possibility that Attorney General Eric Holder would take the case, calling it an issue for “state and local” law enforcement.

Martin’s parents were scheduled to lead protests in New York and Miami in partnership with the Reverend Al Sharpton, who said demonstrations would take place in more than 100 U.S. cities.

For days, activists have rallied around the goal of a Justice Department (DOJ) suit against Zimmerman, who was acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges in Sanford, Fla.

Zimmerman’s attorneys argued that he acted in self-defense, but many have alleged that racial bias was a factor in Martin’s killing. The 17-year-old was unarmed at the time he died. Read more from this story HERE.

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Leading Dem casts doubt on possible DOJ charges against Zimmerman

By Elise Viebeck. A leading House Democrat questioned Friday whether the Justice Department (DOJ) has the evidence to mount a civil rights case against George Zimmerman, the man acquitted of killing an unarmed black teenager in Florida.

Rep. Henry Waxman (Calif.), the top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, said in a television interview that “it seems unlikely” Attorney General Eric Holder would file discrimination charges against Zimmerman…

“I haven’t heard that they could show that there was anything with regard to race involved,” Waxman told C-SPAN’s Newsmakers program.

“There was a boy and this fellow Zimmerman thought he was up to no good and they got into a fight. Read more from this story HERE.

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Whether Feds Prosecute Zimmerman or Not, Little Obama Can Do to Rollback ‘Stand Your Ground’ Laws

By Ben Goad and Julian Hattem. President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have little if any power to compel states to dial back “stand your ground” laws the two have criticized in the wake of George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

While the Justice Department may review the case and could seek civil rights charges against Zimmerman, experts say the federal government has little recourse with the stand your ground laws themselves.

“There’s little the Department of Justice can do,” UCLA law professor Adam Winkler told The Hill.

“States are allowed to have their own criminal laws, including self-defense laws,” Winker said. “DOJ may be able to pursue civil rights charges in individual cases, but it has no authority to overturn state laws.”

The stand your ground laws in two dozen states around the country have come under national scrutiny in the wake of last week’s acquittal of Zimmerman, a volunteer neighborhood watchman, in Martin’s shooting death.
 Read more from this story HERE.

NRA: Holder Exploiting Trayvon Martin Death to Push Gun Control Agenda

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The National Rifle Association (NRA) on Wednesday accused Attorney General Eric Holder of exploiting the death of Trayvon Martin to push the Obama administration’s gun control agenda.

NRA Executive Director Chris Cox blasted Holder’s calls for states to review “stand your ground” laws, which allow the use of deadly force for self-defense. Those statutes received scrutiny during the Florida trial of George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch captain who was acquitted Saturday on charges of murder and manslaughter in the shooting of Martin, an unarmed black teenager.

“The attorney general fails to understand that self-defense is not a concept, it’s a fundamental human right,” Cox said in a statement. “To send a message that legitimate self-defense is to blame is unconscionable and demonstrates once again that this administration will exploit tragedies to push their political agenda.”

In a speech Tuesday, Holder said “stand your ground” laws in states like Florida encouraged “violent situations to escalate.”

“Separate and apart from the case that has drawn the nation’s attention, it’s time to question laws that senselessly expand the concept of self-defense and sow dangerous conflict in our neighborhoods,” Holder said.

Read more from this story HERE.

More Evidence Zimmerman Trial Really Was About Second Amendment (+video)

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Attorney General Eric Holder took aim at Stand Your Ground laws Tuesday, saying the measures increase the chance for violence.

“These laws try to fix something that was never broken,” Holder said in a previously-scheduled speech to the NAACP convention in Orlando that marked the Obama administration’s first new policy announcement since neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman was acquitted last weekend in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

“By allowing and perhaps encouraging violent situations to escalate in public, such laws undermine public safety,” he said.

More than 30 states have passed Stand Your Ground laws, which eliminate the duty to retreat before using deadly force in self defense.

The doctrine has long been recognized across the country with respect to home invasions. But the new laws expand the concept — doing away with the duty to retreat in a variety of other venues. The Florida law authorizes an individual to use deadly force as self defense “in any…place he or she has a right to be.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Race Industry Leeches

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Photo Credit: frontpagemagThe trial of George Zimmerman is over, but the persecution of him by the race industry isn’t. The Department of Justice is currently combing through the case to find some pretext, no matter how specious, for charging Zimmerman with a violation of civil-rights laws. No matter that the FBI investigation has eliminated race as a factor in Zimmerman’s actions, or that the prosecutors in Florida studiously ignored race as a motive. Under Attorney General Eric Holder, the DOJ has become the Luca Brasi of the race industry, enforcing the self-serving, racialist narrative that in part propelled Holder’s boss into the White House. So don’t be surprised if the DOJ seizes the opportunity.

Indeed, the specter of a DOJ trial is just the latest in a series of events, from the Duke lacrosse team prosecution to Holder’s abuse of the Voting Rights Act, that demonstrate the mendacious, hypocritical racial ideology that permeates our politics and institutions. The central theme of this narrative is the endemic, eternal white racism that accounts for every dysfunction in the black community. No amount of progress, from the remarkable expansion of the black middle class to the utter discrediting of old-school racists like the Ku Klux Klan, can alter this narrative, for the simple reason that a significant number of black politicians, professors, federal and state employees, and activists gain power and money by exploiting the “racism” meme.

Consider the reaction to the trial from the usual race-hack subjects. Hilary Shelton, head of the NAACP Washington Bureau, said, “Those of us who are fathers, particularly of African-American boys, find it [the acquittal] shockingly frightening.” The message, he says, is “Not only can we do this, we can get away with it.”

Well, what should be “shockingly frightening” is the fact that 64% of black children live in homes without a father. Huge numbers of black men are siring children they do not take responsibility for, and are getting away with it. This means that Shelton is speaking about a minority of black men when he evokes “those of us who are fathers,” a minority that no doubt comprises those blacks who are better educated and better employed than the other two-thirds. In other words, Shelton is exploiting the social and economic dysfunctions of under-educated, under-employed clients of the welfare state in order to justify the power and influence of the NAACP.

Read more from this story HERE.

Feds Admit that IRS Targeted Political Candidates for Audit

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Photo Credit: Evan VucciThe Treasury Department has admitted for the first time that confidential tax records of several political candidates and campaign donors were improperly scrutinized by government officials, but the Justice Department has declined to prosecute any of the cases.

Its investigators also are probing two allegations that the Internal Revenue Service “targeted for audit candidates for public office,” the Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration, J. Russell George, has privately told Sen. Chuck Grassley.

In a written response to a request by Mr. Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Mr. George said a review turned up four cases since 2006 in which unidentified government officials took part in “unauthorized access or disclosure of tax records of political donors or candidates,” including one case he described as “willful.” In four additional cases, Mr. George said, allegations of improper access of IRS records were not substantiated by the evidence.

Mr. Grassley has asked Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to explain why the Justice Department chose not to prosecute any of the cases. The Iowa Republican told The Washington Times that the IRS “is required to act with neutrality and professionalism, not political bias.”

The investigation did not name the government officials who obtained the IRS records improperly, nor did it reveal the identities or political parties of the people whose tax records were compromised. By law, taxpayer records at the IRS are supposed to be confidential.

Read more from this story HERE.

Holder Living High on the Hog, Too: Spent Almost $1.5 Million on Travel in 2011

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Photo Credit: ReutersU.S. Attorney General Eric Holder took 62 out-of-town trips in fiscal year 2011 at a cost of at least $1.45 million, according to a set of disclosures sent to Bloomberg News.

Holder’s travel during the period included an April 2011 trip to Las Vegas, marked business and personal, that cost $46,358. Nine other trips, including visits to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and Miami, were labeled “personal,” and cost a combined $169,502. He took an $83,002 flight to Krakow, Poland, to attend the G-6 summit.

Flight costs for seven trips, including journeys to China, Hawaii and Brussels, weren’t provided.

As attorney general, Holder is a “required use” official who is compelled by executive order to use government aircraft for all travel while in office due to “security and communications needs,” according to a February 2013 U.S. Government Accountability Office report.

For personal trips, Holder is required to reimburse the government for the equivalent commercial coach fare, which is often much less than the total trip costs, the GAO said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Senator Demands Sex-Assault Answers From Holder

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Sen. John McCain, R, Ariz., who challenged Barack Obama for the White House in 2008, has demanded Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, answer why his agency is arbitrarily changing court-approved sex-assault standards for American colleges and universities.

The dispute is raging over a settlement the DOJ with the University of Montana that inserts new language into requirements for the proper investigation and prosecution of sexual-assault allegations on campus.

The new DOJ standard says that “any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature” is sexual harassment, which critics already have argued could include unwanted flirting or date invitations and some content of classroom curricula.

And the new policy demands immediate discipline for those accused of offending – hearkening to “Alice in Wonderland,” where the standard was sentence first, verdict later.

McCain, the ranking member of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, wrote to the DOJ expressing his concern that the civil rights division under Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez “has circumvented the regular rulemaking process and congressional authority by redefining long-standing legal precedent,” according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

Read more from this story HERE.

Mark Steyn: We’re at a Point Where “Respectable Society Decays into Something Darker and Far More Sinister and Unattractive”

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photo credit: nmhschool

In a wide-ranging interview with Hugh Hewitt this week, Mark Steyn weighed in on everything from Holder and the IRS scandal to the disclosure of the federal government’s extensive surveillance of the American public:

Hugh Hewitt: Mark, I’d like to begin with a simple request. Please don’t call me at home, because if anybody’s being snooped, I’m sure you are.

Mark Steyn: Yeah, in the days before all this stuff broke, I had, I suddenly became terribly paranoid. I started thinking I heard clicks on the line. And my assistant sent me an email which mysteriously took 13 hours to arrive, and I though oh, yes, that’s gone via Eric Holder. And I think it actually makes sense for the default position to be that you just assume that somewhere, somehow, this is being recorded by some government operative somewhere or other.

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Hugh Hewitt: You know, I was on Sean Hannity’s television show on Monday night with Joe Trippi, and not even Joe, there are no Democrats who will deny that Eric Holder misled Congress. Nobody believes he was telling the truth, Mark Steyn, and yet he’s still the attorney general.

Mark Steyn: Well, yeah, and this is the chief law officer of the United States. And he’s just gone on national television and said he was obligated to lie to the judge. I had to sign some rinky-dink, little affidavit for something or another the other day, and you know, you have to get it notarized and all the rest of it, and you’re not allowed, when the citizen has to file relatively routine bits of information, you’re not allowed to lie. In fact, the point of the law, you’re not allowed to lie to Eric Holder’s minions. You’re not allowed to lie to a federal agent. Martha Stewart went to jail for lying to an employee of the attorney general of the United States. Yet the Attorney General himself is allowed to lie to a judge. This isn’t small stuff, you know. It’s the point at which a respectable society decays into something darker and far more sinister and unattractive.

Eric Holder Tells Press in Off-the Record Meeting: We Won’t Spy on You Anymore

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Photo Credit: AP

In a meeting with Attorney General Eric Holder, executives from several news organizations said the attorney general pledged to change the way the Justice Department conducts investigations that involve reporters.

Government officials said they would work to change guidelines on issuing subpoenas in criminal investigations involving reporters and ensure searches that have raised concerns recently about freedom of the press are not repeated, the editors said.

The news executives made the comments Thursday after meeting with Holder and some of his aides.

The discussion took place following an outcry from news organizations over the Justice Department’s secret gathering of some Associated Press reporters’ phone records and some emails of a Fox News journalist.

Read more from this story HERE.

AP, NY Times Snub Obama Administration, Refuse to Attend Off-Record Briefing

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The Associated Press says it will not attend this week’s off-the-record meeting with Attorney General Eric Holder unless the Justice Department decides to change its mind and conduct the meeting on the record.

“We believe the meeting should be on the record and we have said that to the Attorney General’s office. If it is on the record, AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll will attend. If it is not on the record, AP will not attend and instead will offer our views on how the regulations should be updated in an open letter,” AP spokesperson Erin Madigan said in a statement sent to POLITICO. “We would expect AP attorneys to be included in any planned meetings between the Attorney General’s office and media lawyers on the legal specifics.”

The AP’s decision comes over an hour after The New York Times announced that it would not be attending the meeting, citing concerns about the DOJ’s off-the-record provision.

Read more from this story HERE.